Helping Baby Boomers to continue to earn income, as long as they want

September 2016

09/22/2016

Conservative high-traffic media site the Drudge Report has found yet another angle to position Hillary as, well, "off." Tonight's treat is Manic-Hillary.

The attack isn't a headliner. The chaos in Charlotte still dominates. And with good reason. Its issues could become one of the tipping points in the election.

But there is a provocative link to The Washington Post video clip of Hillary's address to the Laborers' International Union of North America. The attention-getting device is to label it "Manic Hillary." Here you can view the video.

Hillary does raise her voice, actually quite a bit. And she puts out there the question: Why aren't I 50 points ahead? She brings up that her dad was a small businessman. She attacks Trump's business relationships with the working man. She demands that he put out there more information about this and that.

But, manic? I don't agree. Instead I would label the speech as "stale." Both in content and in delivery. Hillary seems tired.

It could be that the Drudge Report is also getting a bit stale in its Down-With-Hillary memes.

09/21/2016

Drudge Report sometimes hammers a point directly. Sometimes its approach is more Machiavellian indirect. Tonight's headline might be the latter.

Essentially, this evening's headline is a double one.

Part is to blare that Donald Trump is making significant progress in battleground states such as Nevada, Ohio, and North Carolina.

The other part is a developing story. According to the Drudge Report, come tomorrow, influential The Washington Post will publish an article about Hillary's reaching out to the disabled and their families.

This is really no surprise in itself. An ongoing political ad on radio is a young mother discussing how her daughter became a victim of chronic diseases at a young age. Maintaining her medications is expensive. A single one costs $1,000. It was Hillary's campaign to provide for children's prescriptions that made it possible for the family to be able to provide the child what she needs.

That's very moving for any of us who had to struggle with prescription expenses. I recall one medication I had to take was so expensive that the pharmacist personally called the medical doctor and begged him to shift to an appropriate generic.

It never did dawn on me until the Drudge Report headline that Hillary might be making a special pitch to the disabled and their families. And the reason she is doing that may be that it could "come out" that she herself has a disability.

Because I blog frequently on the Drudge Report Sick-Hillary meme, comments comes in. I won't post them because what they contend about Hillary's health could constitute defamation. However, before long, they might be proven to be accurate.

09/20/2016

Conservative Drudge Report was busy changing headlines today. Earlier it was the one about Hillary's cock-eyed left eye.

This evening the headline is about her abruptly backing out of a fundraiser scheduled for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She gave no reason. This is at a time when Donald Trump is 1 point ahead of her in the Elon University poll. Here is the coverage in Zero Hedge.

Of course, blasting news of the no-show hammers the Sick-Hillary issue. Was she not healthy enough to do the fundraiser?

The Drudge Report has all eyes on Hillary for the September 26th debate. Everyone will be monitoring her for any sign of ill health or a lack of energy.

The head of 21st Century Fox, Rupert Murdoch, is in his 80s. But his age is irrelevant.

One reason is because he has presence. Employees refer to him as "The Sun God." When he enters the room, all entities turn to him. You bet, he owns that room.

We too can blow up age bias if we establish presence. I know.

When I had arrived in Tucson, Arizona from the New York Metro area, I was broken. Those in Manhattan who could hire my communications services had begun to treat me as invisible. The solution, at least temporarily, was to heal in a location where there wasn't the brutal discrimination about age.

During my 27 months in AZ, I developed a mindset that I was SuperMarketer. In my gut, I knew that was the way back to being on the top of my game in my field. Yes, it worked. So well, in fact, that I have relocated back East. No, not New York Metro, but my new base of operations is back where my East Coast roots are.

Well, there is now a book which documents the dynamics of presence with research and case studies.

In her book"Presence," Harvard professor, Amy Cuddy lays it all out. Everyman and Everywoman can gain presence. And the first step begins in their head. They have to be see themselves as The SuperProfessional. Then the rest will follow. That rest could include many other professional goodies.

Don't believe it?

Cuddy tells readers about entrepreneurs. The ones who got the funding were not necessarily the founders with the best investment prospects. Rather, they were ones whose presence convinced others to bet on them. And they were the ones with the ironclad belief in themselves. During his darkest days, Steve Jobs continued to believe in myself. On that mindset he eventually put together the platform for his unique presence.

Cuddy had to learn the presence game the hard way. When she was a doctoral student her mentor introduced her to a few bigs in the field. In an elevator, one demanded she sum up what her work was about.

Her presentation, that influential bluntly told her, was the worst "elevator speech" he had ever heard. No question, Cuddy had plenty of reason to study the art of presence.

When I was a ghostwriter/speechwriterfor Lee Iacocca, who had turned around Chrysler in the 1980s, the anecdote bouncing around was that he hadn't been born with a silver-tongue. He made it his business to take a Dale Carnegie introductory course in public speaking. Then he would fly in for a speech or a sales pitch a day early. He threw himself into practice practice practice. But to follow that MO, Iacocca had to have the mindset that he could and would become a great. He did.

The obstacle for too many professionals who could achieve presence is that they are convinced they already are all they could be. After all, they had gotten "this far." Ironically, to dominate in their niches, all they would probably need to do is turn on that switch in their head which allows them to believe they are capable of so much more.

09/18/2016

It's a trick I learned from blogging about the high-traffic Drudge Report: That's to search the archives for an unflattering photo of the nemesis. And that's what I have done.

Here's a photo of Kathleen Huebner which probably is not the worst. But not the best. We take what we can from the digital archives.

Huebner and I matriculated together at Seton Hill University, Greensburg, Pennsylvania during the 1960s. We weren't friends. Didn't travel in the same circles.

And probably we would never have seen each other again after the 1967 graduation had I not run into her at the Cathedral of Learning of the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1970s. After that, we got together a few times but the relationship never got traction.

That was then.

Somehow, shame on me, I re-grouped with some Seton Hill classmates on Facebook several years ago. They were Lee Harrison, Irene Nunn, and Charlotte Toal. Huebner became part of the hail-hail-the-gang-is-all-here.

The New York Metro area was getting too expensive tor me. I had to find a new home. One place on my list, along with Spain (where I had once lived and worked) and Ecuador, was Arizona. I had done business there plenty when employed full time with an oil corporation.

Huebner was living in a retirement community in Oro Valley, AZ. We talked about "it." That is, my making that cross-country move. And that I did. She was the only person I knew in AZ.

From the get-go, I sensed that no, you can't go home again in relationships, particularly one that never had developed. That was Easter Sunday 2014. I had treated Huebner to lunch at her retirement development. Inside, I rolled my eyes. AZ was not looking like it had when I had been conducting business there.

By the end of May of that year (emotions develop and fester fast) I responded to Huebner's e-greeting card with a request not to contact me again.

So, what went so wrong? How did something sour so much so fast?

Likely, I will never figure that one out. Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield recommends we don't try so hard to figure stuff out.

That's when I stopped attempting to make sense of the puzzle of why Huebner elicited such a negative reaction in me. After all, the AZ pilgrimage, which lasted 27 months, was a roaring success:

I healed from the careerism of New York

I reset my communications boutique to what was in demand

I paid off all debt

I built enough of a nest egg to purchase a house (if that is what I decide to do)

I became self-aware enough to return back East (not New York), which I did at the end of August 2016.

Humans are put together with layers of concealment. Do we ever really know a person?

I was clueless about my mother until my aunts filled me in on her youth several years after her death. Then, I had some insight but embraced that she would remain an enigma to me.

I will never know who Huebner is. What I do know is that I am not attending our alma mater's 50th reunion next year. That encounter with her and the other classmates on Facebook triggers a panic attack in me when there is a flashback.

How I regret reaching back into the past. If that has also been your experience, please share that with readers. Contact me at janegenova374@gmail.com. Maybe we won't make sense of this kind of trauma but just be able to warn others to not look back.

That was one of the Birthday Sentiments which didn't get me hired by Hallmark, back in the 1970s. But, as part of an opinion-editorial, it did get me published in The Wall Street Journal in the 1980s.

What a difference time makes.

I hope that time has been and will continue to be kind to my younger sister, Anne Murga-Ring. We grew up together on the mean streets of Jersey City, New Jersey. Now she bunks in Florida.

And I? I'm now based in the farm country of Ohio. But, thanks to telecommuting, I am making a ton of money. Thanks to the low-cost of living, so little going to keep a roof over my head. If I keep on saving, I may be able to afford to migrate back to the gentrified Jersey City. As Dorothy observed in "Wizard of Oz," there is no place like home. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't remember playing ball on Bay Street, in downtown Jersey City.

On September 21st, Murga-Ring will be one year older. That's how the time game plays out.

As for us over-60, after we sell the family home, the odds are that we will choose to rent. No longer do I want the uncertain expenses and Mr. Fixit problems associated with home ownership. Since I operate a business, I can't be distracted by trying to find a plumber at 3:00 A.M. or fret about the property's fluctuating market value.

That has made America Landlord Nation. The new activism has to focus on a fair deal for renters.

Perceiving the landlord as unfair or up to something illegal is nothing new, of course. As lawyers know, in small claims courts, there had always been plenty of landlord-tenant disputes.

What is new is the growing fear not to rock the boat with any property manager. The screening process for leasing another apartment is comprehensive, not just a check of one's credit rating. Often, former landlords are contacted.

In Landlord Nation, one particular trouble spot is Arizona. There, at least in Tucson, where I lived inVista Montana, owned byWeidner, for 27 months, property managers don't have to renew your lease. And don't have to give an explanation. Mine had been renewed several times. That is not my personal beef.

What concerned me was this: I was conscious of how arbitrary it could be not to provide tenants with a new lease. For instance, a cabal of other leasers could have gone to the property manager in an organized manner, complaining about alleged misdeeds. That renter could then be toast. Moving is expensive.

What directly affected me was the move-out protocol. Because of emerging professional opportunities back East, I broke my 10-month lease with Vista Montana. It was a pleasant surprise that the process only entailed a 30-day notice and a $222.00 penalty. I made a lot more than that my first week when I returned East.

What was not pleasant were the move-out requirements. They included having to have the carpet professionally cleaned at our own expense. That was not considered normal wear-and-tear. Also, the instructions indicated that the walls had to washed down. Small areas in the apartment should be cleaned with a tooth brush.

There's more. It wasn't until I got billed for eight-hours of cleaning post-move that the standard of "clean," it seemed, was move-in.

The funny thing? The square footage was way under 500. How could cleaning require eight hours? When I left and moved into houses I had purchased that standard wasn't required. Was I really being billed to get the apartment up to move-in condition? Move-out and move-in standards of "clean" are certainly different. Or should be.

That eight hours of cleaning represented a charge deducted from my damage deposit. In Landlord Nation, I had to just eat that expense.

My advice to renters in AZ: Read the move-out instructions before you sign the lease to move in.

Better yet, since property in the Tucson area tends to be affordable, you might consider buying. Had I to do it over again, I never would have leased in AZ. I would have purchased a condo or small house. That was even though I swore that the house I sold in West Hartford, Connecticut, in 2004, for a big profit would be my last. Things change, don't they.

Maybe, the best decision: Don't move to AZ. Vista Montana left me with a bad taste in my mouth about the rights of and protections for those of us who have to have a roof over our heads and just don't want the burden of ownership.

09/17/2016

The 1976 book "Blind Ambition" was John Dean's attempt to explain his dark side during the Nixon Administration.

The Watergate mess which resulted from that extreme drive triggered dialogue (that was the term used back then, not conversation) about the need to keep ambition within ethics and law.

Yet, one wonders if those kinds of Sunday-School explorations of values took in America. From the get-go, we are socialized to push. Mothers warn their daughters about developing a romance with anyone lacking in ambition.

Currently, the issue of blind ambition has reared its head again with Hillary Clinton. She risked her life to reach her goal: the White House. Pneumonia for a person her age is nothing to fool around with. And, there is a suspicion that she let down supporters by allegedly keeping from them the facts of her health.

If Clinton does accomplish her goal, then all this could be forgotten. But if she doesn't then her legacy might be shaped by the seminal question: Did blind ambition do her in?

Her particular kind of ambition will be portrayed as not a singular drive to be U.S. President. She also seemed to chase money. Big Time. In addition, she seemed to want "The Godfather" type of respect or the Don't-Mess-With-Me branding.

Put those all together and Loser Clinton could be positioned and packaged as an ugly example of how not to put together a career - or a life.

The Drudge Report has made it its signature to post unflattering photos of Clinton. Maybe they will wind up embedded in the national consciousness if her ambition is shown to be her tragic flaw. Not her number-one strength.

The reality is that aging is a normal human process. Some day venture capitalist Peter Thiel might arrest it. But as for now it is what it is. I am no longer middle aged. Soon enough I will cross that line over to old age.

As I experience aging, I don't welcome any supposed compliments. Time passes. And that's that.

09/16/2016

But even worse than that for Baby Boomers is that we have so much difficulty trying to get a "diagnosis." Most of us remain tech-illiterate. We simply don't have the lingo to describe what's happening. We fear the worst. Meanwhile, the work that should be getting done on our PCs isn't.

Earlier this week I was in that pickle. What made the experience really scary was that I had just moved to Austintown, Ohio. I didn't know where to go for help. On my iPhone I searched for a computer repair center. PC Doctor popped up. It is right in Austintown. I called (330-792-2244).

Matt, who answered, had a wonderful "bedside manner." He listened. He gently probed. For once I didn't feel "old."

Matt told me exactly what to do. Soon enough, I was back in business.

Baby Boomers in Eastern OH and Western Pennsylvania should first check in with the PC Doctor at the first sign of trouble. Service is fast. Its pricing is discount. Monday through Friday the hours are 10 to 6. On Saturdays, they are there 10 to 4.